


Chasers

by totheletter



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/totheletter/pseuds/totheletter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gosh, what 1996 Hollywood blockbuster could this be based on?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!?!?!??!?!!?!?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasers

Buster Posey’s red pickup blasted down the ramrod-straight two-lane blacktop. Buster hummed along with the Zac Brown tune coming out of the radio as he scanned the horizon. The cap was still in place, and SPC didn’t expect it to break for another few hours yet. He glanced over at Clayton, who was looking back at him.

“You’re nervous about seeing him,” Clayton said, smirking.

Buster gripped the wheel a little tighter. “No, I’m not.”

“You are. I can tell.”

Buster looked once more at Clayton. “Maybe a little. It’s going to be awkward.”

“I’m not going to punch the guy or something.” Clayton said. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“It’s not your behavior I’m worried about.”

Clayton laughed. “We can still turn around.”

“No, we can’t,” Buster replied. “The grant has my name on it, and if they’re going to fuck around with money I helped them get, I want to see what’s going on.”

“For how long?”

Buster nodded. “Just for a little while. Half an hour, tops. Then I’m done.”

* * * * *

Madison jabbed his index finger onto the iPad screen. He tried again. And again. He groaned. “Would somebody _please_ take a look at this? I can’t get the Bluetooth thingy to transmit the radar updates.”

“Hand it here,” Javier said. “I’ll add it to the list.”

Madison handed him the iPad and turned back to the equipment van. “List, my ass. Get it done. If SPC is right, this cap isn’t going to hold much longer, and we’re going to need that storm relative velocity product in the field.”

He walked across the gas station parking lot to Sergio’s car. The bass beats from the car’s speakers rattled his chest. “HEY! PHIL SPECTOR! YOU WANNA CUT THE WALL OF SOUND?”

Romo cranked down the volume and leaned out the open driver’s side door. “What?”

“Exactly,” Madison said. “Look, what’s the latest on the meso analysis?”

“Uh, yeah. Got that…well, I did have it…”

Madison arched an eyebrow. “You’re killing me, Romo.”

“Hold your horses, man!” Romo fiddled with his Android until he found the right data. “Right here! See? Uh…lifted indices minus six to minus ten – holy wow – surface-to-one-kilometer helicity is off the charts. And check this out: the surface-based CAPE has gone up dramatically in the last three hours.”

“The dynamics are cookin’.” Madison said.

“Brother. Surface dewpoints in the 70s ahead of the system. And looks like the dryline’s starting to advance east.”

“That’s our meal ticket. Keep an eye on the cap,” Madison replied. “Cainer! You ready?”

Matt Cain looked up from a makeshift table and held up a rolled map in his fist. “Ready!”

“Belt, the oh-six Zulu soundings from OKC should still be good. How’s TAMMI?”

Brandon gave Madison the thumbs-up. He put his hand on the silvery aluminum barrel in the back of his truck. “She’s rarin’.”

“Good. Today’s going to be one of those days, I think.”

Romo got out of his car and peered down the road. “Holy shit.”

Matt turned around. “What is it?”

“I spy with my little eye a very familiar truck.”

Buster slowed and turned into the service station’s parking lot.

“I’ll be damned,” Cain said. “Does he know?”

Romo shook his head. “If he did, he kept it to himself.”

Cain suddenly looked puzzled. “Is there someone else in the truck with him?”

Buster’s heart pounded. Clayton looked at him. “You gonna be okay, babe?”

“Yeah.” He drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Yes.”

Posey got out of the truck and started walking toward Madison, who was kneeling next to a balky portable Doppler setup. “Listen, you wouldn’t know where I could find some storm chasers around here, would you?”

Madison looked up, startled. “Holy fuck, man.”

Buster smiled. “Hey.”

Madison stood up and dusted off his hands. “Good to see you. A surprise, but good to see you.”

Buster kicked at a pebble and watched it skitter across the hot asphalt. “Yeah, I probably should have called. But I didn’t know you guys were going to make the debut until I called OU the other day.”

Madison nodded. “Yeah, I think she’s ready.”

Posey stared at him. “I guess the question is why you didn’t call me.”

Madison let out an uncomfortable laugh. “I don’t have a good answer for that.”

Buster smirked. “That’s unsurprising. Listen, I just wanted to check it out, is all. Then we’ll be—“

“We?” Madison said. “There’s a ‘we’?”

“Clayton’s with me, yes.”

Both men turned to see Clayton engaging in what looked like a stilted conversation with Romo.

“You left him with Romo?” Madison said. “Are you _nuts?_ ”

He walked away from Posey, who hesitated for a moment, then followed Madison.

“Are you a religious man?” Romo asked, leaning toward Clayton. Even though he had at least a foot in height on Romo, Clayton leaned slightly backward, bewildered.

“I’m Methodist,” he replied.

“Finger of God, man,” Romo said, holding up his fingers. “An EF-5 is the finger of God.”

“Sergio, stop scaring this guy out of his wits,” Madison said. “Go check the meso data again.”

“There won’t be another update for 45 minutes.”

Madison glared at Romo. “Or hey, I could go see if there’s another update.” He stalked off, muttering “ _Il Duce_ ” under his breath.

“Sorry about that,” Madison said, wiping his palm on the thigh of his jeans and reaching out to Clayton. “I’m Madison Bumgarner.”

Clayton shook his hand. “Clayton Kershaw. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“All lies,” Bumgarner said. “Even the positive stuff.”

Posey cleared his throat. “We just came down to see her, and that shouldn’t take too long.”

Bumgarner smiled. “Why rush? Clayton, you want to meet the rest of the crew?”

“We really don’t hav—“

“Sure!” Kershaw said. Posey gritted his teeth.

Bumgarner motioned for Kershaw to follow him. “Sergio Romo, you already met. This here’s Javier Lopez. He’s our tech guy.”

Lopez shook Kershaw’s hand. “A pleasure.”

“Over there, the guy with all the maps? Matt Cain. He’s our navigator, you might say. He makes sure we don’t get ourselves killed. Which nearly happens about half a dozen times a season.”

“You’re all grad students?” Kershaw asked.

“Belt’s not. He’s still undergrad, but he’s doing some work with us this summer. In fact…in fact.” He quickly turned to face Kershaw and Posey. “He’s been maintaining TAMMI. You wanna see her?”

Posey huffed. “That’s why we came all the way down here.”

Madison’s face lit up as he scrambled into the bed of Belt’s pickup. The rest of the team gathered around as he extended a hand to Posey and helped pull him up into the truck bed. “Buster, Clayton, meet TAMMI.”

Kershaw looked around. “This is it?”

Bumgarner rapped his knuckled on the metal barrel’s plastic lid. “ _Her_ ,” he corrected. “Did Buster tell you anything about her?”

“It’s a— _she’s_ a machine for studying tornadoes.”

“Right. The Tornadic And Mesocyclonic Monitoring Instrument. Anemometers, carefully-calibrated barometers, hygrometer, thermometer, live wireless telemetry for a radius of up to a mile.”

Posey shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe you got it done.”

Kershaw smiled politely. “I don’t quite understand.”

“All kinds of weather instruments are mounted to the outside of the package,” Posey said. “The big canister. Inside…”

Madison hit a button, popping the top up and open. Posey looked inside and fished out a small translucent plastic sphere, about the size of an orange. He handed it to Kershaw.

“There are about a hundred of those little guys inside. They’re sensors. Once TAMMI gets into the tornado, the sensors fly up into the funnel itself and transmit data on the internal structure and characteristics of the storm—“

“—for the first time, offering a comprehensive analysis of the inside of a tornado,” Bumgarner said.

Kershaw handed the sensor back to Posey. “I thought we already knew about tornadoes.”

“On the synoptic level, yes. We knew about that in the 1940s. On the meso level, yeah, but we’re still figuring that out,” Bumgarner said. “Once you get down to the micro level – that’s the smallest scale of meteorological study – there’s some big mysteries. There’s a shit-ton we don’t know. That’s what Buster and I were working on when we were together at Oklahoma.”

“Working together,” Posey quickly added.

“Right,” Bumgarner said, glancing at Posey. “Working together.”

Clayton nodded slowly. “All that’s pretty technical stuff. Buster hasn’t told me a whole lot about it.”

“It’s kinda boring,” Posey said. He hopped down off the tailgate.

“Are you kidding me?” Kershaw said. “It sounds awesome!”

Bumgarner jumped down from the truck and signaled to Belt, who took his place and reset TAMMI.

“So then what?” Clayton asked. “You get those sensor things up in the tornado. What do you do with the information?”

“Improve our models,” Bumgarner said. “Fine-tune our forecasts. Ultimately, create better tornado warnings for more communities. All right, guys. Back to work.”

The crew sauntered back to their respective vehicles. Bumgarner walked with Posey and Kershaw back to Buster’s truck.

Posey smiled and shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. We worked on this project for three years, and there she is. I never thought it would happen.”

“Stick around,” Bumgarner said. “See her in action.”

“We can’t, really,” Buster said. “In fact, we better leave before the cap breaks and you guys get busy.”

Kershaw ran a hand through his shaggy blonde hair, trying to brush it out of his eyes in the increasing wind. A glint of sunlight caught Madison’s eye. He looked again.

“A ring,” he muttered.

“What, now?” Posey said.

“You guys are engaged?”

“Oh. Uh,” Posey’s face turned deep red. “Yeah, we, uh. Yeah.”

“Seems a little fast.”

“I disagree,” Posey said.

“We wanted to get it done before Buster starts his new job up in Kansas City,” Kershaw said.

“Oh, yeah,” Bumgarner said. “ _Weatherman_.”

“Christ,” Posey said. “Here we go.”

“What? What did I say?”

“It was the way you said it. _Weatherman_. In that tone you use.”

“There’s no tone!” Madison said, putting his hands in his pockets. “I stated your impending occupation. Clay, help me out here.”

“It’s Clayton.”

Madison rolled his eyes. “Of course it is.”

“MADISON!” Romo shouted. Bumgarner whipped around. “THE CAP’S BREAKING! SUPERCELLS ARE FIRING UP NEAR LAWTON! WE GOTTA MOVE!”

Bumgarner turned back to Posey and Kershaw. “Guys, I gotta…”

Posey waved him off. “Go.”

Madison threw a quick wave at the two men. “Clay, good to meet you,” and he was off. The other guys hastily tossed backpacks and assorted equipment into the vehicles and cranked up.

“They’re pros,” Buster mused. “They got this. Come on.”

He and Kershaw got back into the truck, and Buster started the ignition. He sat there for a moment, looking out at the departing storm chasers.

“You want to go,” Kershaw said, more statement than question.

“Naw.”

“Yes, you do! So…why not?”

Buster looked at his fiancée, eyes wide. “Are you joking?”

“No!” Clayton said, grinning. “I think it might be fun. Let’s go!”

“I could kiss you,” Posey said. He threw the truck into drive and hit the gas, squealing out of the gas station and onto Route 8, rushing to catch up with his baby and her rendezvous with nature’s greatest force.


End file.
